On their third disc, The Evil Queens make due with unexpected touches of kicky instrumentation to their dirty, groove-heavy brand of bar band rock.

Lovesong Werewolves

With three previous albums under their belts, a distinct lack of fluffy ballads, and full-blown bar band bombast, The Evil Queens' latest, Lovesong Werewolves is chock full of pulsing, chugging guitars that three-chord their way through lo-fi landscapes. Steadfast drumming rolls behind lead singer Jacob Sundermeyer's impassioned alternations between lyrical droning and impassioned screaming. More substance over style, The Evil Queens may find their brand of guitar-heavy, cerebral groove rock that finds its niche with a whiskey-swigging, hipster intellectual crowd. Appealing to one's sense of the jilted and jaded, the slow, menacing grind of "Bad Luck Charm" is emblematic of The Evil Queen's youthfully grizzled lyrics: "I am your biggest fan / I am your one night stand / Your river running with blood / Your ocean full of blood".

While all solid riff-fests in their own right, at first listen, the tracks on Lovesong Werewolves aren't completely memorable. Nevertheless, it's The Evil Queen's clever transposition of gonzo journalistic style into lyrical format (particularly on "America, America") that serves as the band's ace in the hole. Lured in by the group's charged lyrics, eventually, The Evil Queens load up several swift kicks in the ass with brutal, straight-forward bar band rock. "Lions of May" stands as a prime example of this with "Year of the Cretin" pulling up with a very E Street saxophone riff assisting in crafting a piece that would be at home in a John Waters' film or a '60s biker bar jukebox. Interestingly placed piano tinkles and skips its way through "Into the Drink" while the excellent "Carta" rips through with raw energy that bridges an astoundingly odd combination of snarling punk with the exhuberence and emotion of early Meatloaf. Yeah, it works.

White Hills epic '80s callback
Stop Mute Defeat is a determined march against encroaching imperial darkness; their eyes boring into the shadows for danger but they're aware that blinding lights can kill and distort truth. From "Overlord's" dark stomp casting nets for totalitarian warnings to "Attack Mode", which roars in with the tribal certainty that we can survive the madness if we keep our wits, the record is a true and timely win for Dave W. and Ego Sensation. Martin Bisi and the poster band's mysterious but relevant cool make a great team and deliver one of their least psych yet most mind destroying records to date. Much like the first time you heard Joy Division or early Pigface, for example, you'll experience being startled at first before becoming addicted to the band's unique microcosm of dystopia that is simultaneously corrupting and seducing your ears. - Morgan Y. Evans

The year in song reflected the state of the world around us. Here are the 70 songs that spoke to us this year.

70. The Horrors - "Machine"

On their fifth album V, the Horrors expand on the bright, psychedelic territory they explored with Luminous, anchoring the ten new tracks with retro synths and guitar fuzz freakouts. "Machine" is the delicious outlier and the most vitriolic cut on the record, with Faris Badwan belting out accusations to the song's subject, who may even be us. The concept of alienation is nothing new, but here the Brits incorporate a beautiful metaphor of an insect trapped in amber as an illustration of the human caught within modernity. Whether our trappings are technological, psychological, or something else entirely makes the statement all the more chilling. - Tristan Kneschke

"...when the history books get written about this era, they'll show that the music community recognized the potential impacts and were strong leaders." An interview with Kevin Erickson of Future of Music Coalition.

Last week, the musician Phil Elverum, a.k.a. Mount Eerie, celebrated the fact that his album A Crow Looked at Me had been ranked #3 on the New York Times' Best of 2017 list. You might expect that high praise from the prestigious newspaper would result in a significant spike in album sales. In a tweet, Elverum divulged that since making the list, he'd sold…six. Six copies.

Under the lens of cultural and historical context, as well as understanding the reflective nature of popular culture, it's hard not to read this film as a cautionary tale about the limitations of isolationism.

I recently spoke to a class full of students about Plato's "Allegory of the Cave". Actually, I mentioned Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" by prefacing that I understood the likelihood that no one had read it. Fortunately, two students had, which brought mild temporary relief. In an effort to close the gap of understanding (perhaps more a canyon or uncanny valley) I made the popular quick comparison between Plato's often cited work and the Wachowski siblings' cinema spectacle, The Matrix. What I didn't anticipate in that moment was complete and utter dissociation observable in collective wide-eyed stares. Example by comparison lost. Not a single student in a class of undergraduates had partaken of The Matrix in all its Dystopic future shock and CGI kung fu technobabble philosophy. My muted response in that moment: Whoa!

Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell at St. Mark's Church in New York City, 23 February 1977

Scholar Christopher Grobe crafts a series of individually satisfying case studies, then shows the strong threads between confessional poetry, performance art, and reality television, with stops along the way.

Tracing a thread from Robert Lowell to reality TV seems like an ominous task, and it is one that Christopher Grobe tackles by laying out several intertwining threads. The history of an idea, like confession, is only linear when we want to create a sensible structure, the "one damn thing after the next" that is the standing critique of creating historical accounts. The organization Grobe employs helps sensemaking.